WD Black HDDs now shipping in 6TB capacities

Western Digital announced 6TB versions of its Black series HDDs, these 3.5" SATA 6Gbps disks spin at 7200RPM and come with 128MB cache. The HDD maker claims the Black 6TB is up to 29 percent faster than the previous WD Black 4TB in maximum throughput and 10 percent fater in the PCMark Vantage benchmark. The disk is immediately available for $294 and comes with a five-year warranty. A 5TB version is also available for $264.

WD®, a Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) company and a world leader in hard drives, today announced the expansion of its award-winning WD Black™ line of performance hard drives up to 6 TB capacity. Shipping now, the 3.5-inch, 7200 RPM drive is the perfect solution for gamers and professionals in need of high-performance desktop systems and workstations.

"Combining maximum system performance with generous capacity, the expansion of WD Black to 6 TB allows gamers, enthusiasts and creatives to push the boundaries of personalization without compromise," said Cindi Grace, senior vice president of WD storage technology group. "In choosing WD Black hard drives, WD desktop customers get the best possible mix of capacity, performance and reliability to handle intense desktop computing with ease."

WD Black 6 TB hard drives feature the following:

Increased Reliability –StableTrac™ Technology (2 TB and larger models) secures the motor shaft inside of the hard drive to increase reliability and help reduce impact due to system-induced vibrations from other components. By stabilizing the platters inside, the WD Black drive results in more accurate tracking in a particular sector during read and write operations, optimizing performance and reliability.

Increased DRAM cache – The Dynamic Cache Technology improves caching algorithms in real time to allocate and optimize cache between reads and writes. This movement of cache for read data helps to reduce congestion and increase overall performance.

Industry-leading 5-year limited warranty – Compared to standard hard drives, the WD Black drive endures more strenuous and aggressive internal testing over a longer period of time, resulting in it being backed by an industry leading 5-year limited warranty.